Staff Structure
Our diocesan organizational chart is more than lines and titles on a page; it’s a reflection of how we will serve one another and our communities as one diocese. After months of prayer, listening, and careful discernment, your Standing Committee has approved a structure that better supports collaboration, clarifies responsibilities, and ensures that every congregation has someone walking alongside them. However, this structure is not set in stone! If you have feedback on our structure, contact our Standing Committee or our Interim Executive Officer.
Org Chart
Staff Structure: Frequently Asked Questions
The three regional youth missioners positions will conclude at the end of the year due to the strategic decision to shift our financial resources towards a new half-time program manager to support McKenzie Bade-Knill in the administrative, logistical, and on-site supervision of our diocesan camp offerings at Camp Chickagami.
The new part-time Finance Associate for Congregational Support position replaces the former bookkeeper position, which allows us to redistribute the responsibilities in a way that will enable more timely responses and finance/HR support of congregational leaders. The former staff member who had served as bookkeeper resigned early this summer for other reasons and therefore no one is losing their position because of this restructuring.
Regional canons wore many hats in regard to the congregations in their collaborative: staff liaison, search consultant, congregational development consultant, supply priest, conflict mediator, retreat leader, person to call for a referral. The three canons while communicating with one another worked in parallel in that they usually did not work with congregations outside of their collaborative.
The six staff members who each have responsibilities as “congregational staff liaison” are your go to communication contact. If you have a question and don’t know who to call, call your liaison. If you cannot get a call or email returned from a staff member, call your liaison. They will intercede on your behalf. Additionally the six congregational staff liaisons and Jess Kidder (our Program Manager for Holy Ground for Whole Communities) will collectively serve as the Congregational Support Team. Together they will share the happenings and needs of congregations and ensure that the right person (whether because of a pre-existing relationship, portfolio, experience in similar circumstances) responds to a congregation’s particular need or request for assistance.
When your staff liaison visits on a Sunday (once every 8-12 months) they can preach, lead worship, or celebrate Communion based upon their status as a priest or as a licensed lay minister. In addition, because the staff priest will be liaison to few congregations than they served in their collaborative, they will be able to serve as supply priests in congregations both to whom they are a liaison and to others that they are not. Similarly lay staff liaisons will be able to travel on Sunday to visit and support congregations based upon their gifts, portfolios, and lay licenses.
The Director of Congregational Vitality will serve as the Diocesan Transition Officer. They will work with all vestries and search committees throughout the process. A congregation’s staff liaison will come on the first Sunday after a priest departs and explain the general shape of the process. After that, the Transition Officer will be the staff search consultant/support person.
Staff members serving as congregational staff liaisons will serve that role with congregations clustered geographically, but those clusters will not necessarily correspond to Mission Regions boundaries.
Companion Ministries and Programmatic Organizations will have a staff liaison. The entity’s liaison ministry portfolio will align with the ministry focus of the particular Companion Ministry/Programmatic Organization assigned based upon the closest match between entity’s ministry focus and the staff member’s portfolio responsibilities.
Some of this is yet to be determined. Experience has shown that even with the three paid youth missioners, the geographic size of the diocese, and even just the collaboratives, is an obstacle to holding diocesan/collaborative wide events. We are excited to explore the possibilities of partnering with congregations within a Mission Region in hosting regional events that can attract a critical mass of youth for unique opportunities that they are not likely to be able to experience in their own congregational youth group.